Cortana

Microsoft's Cortana might have beaten Amazon's Alexa and Google Assistant to the market, but she's not really kicked off in the same way. Probably because she's not been as widely available, unlike the latter two which have their own smart speakers and are getting installed on new smart gadgets everyday. That might change, though, and it's all thanks to Qualcomm. Read More >>

Despite its best efforts, Microsoft’s Groove Music service never really caught on. So back in October, Microsoft shut the service down and told its users to switch to Spotify. Unfortunately, that decision had some unintended consequences for Microsoft’s digital assistant Cortana, which relied on Groove Music’s library to help people identify songs. Read More >>

Yesterday, a report from Bloomberg came out saying that Samsung will launch a Bixby-powered smart speaker sometime in the first half of 2018. This really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone since DJ Koh already told CNBC back in August that the company was indeed trying to put its digital assistant, which first debuted on the Galaxy S8, into a smart speaker. The timeline is pretty obvious too; I’m betting that Samsung will unveil the device at Mobile World Congress 2018 in late February before putting it on sale sometime in the spring or early summer. Read More >>

Virtual assistants are everywhere these days, and every company seems to have one of their own - each with a different set of skills and features. But they remain closed off, so if something is exclusive to one VA you can't use it with another. But not for long! Because Amazon and Microsoft have announced a partnership that will see Alexa and Cortana working together. Read More >>

Jarem Archer has created a concept Cortana Appliance, which he explains as "basically what imagined Microsoft's version of Alexa or Google Home would be like if they were to use the holographic AI sidekick from the Halo franchise." Read More >>

With Microsoft’s Build developer conference just two days away, the company has revealed one of the most anticipated announcements from the event: A new Cortana-powered speaker made by German audio giant Harman Kardon. Read More >>

The future of city driving—at least in theory—sounds amazing. We’ll have digital assistants in our vehicles to book last-minute restaurant reservations, and we’ll never have to touch a steering wheel again because our cars will drive themselves. At CES, I got a glimpse of how this technology is coming along, and though it was in the context of a carefully designed demo rather than a real-life experience on the city streets, I walked away thinking that a driverless society is a long, long time away. Read More >>

You may have seen the Amazon Echo adverts already - they're the strangely uncomfortable ones where a disembodied voice asks a magical tube to add things to their shopping list, and various other mundane tasks that they can't do because they're too busy using their hands to do human things. Read More >>

Oh dear—not still clicking around with a mouse and keyboard are you? What is this, early 2015? Cortana comes baked into Windows 10 now, so you can shout out commands and control your laptop or desktop using your voice instead. Here are some of the neat ways you can make use of it. Read More >>

Microsoft has revealed plans to bring Android phone notifications to the desktop. The new feature, which was demoed this week at Build 2016, will rely on the Cortana app, and allow users to view, dismiss and in some cases even respond to Android notifications, such as missed calls and messages, directly from a Windows 10 computer. Read More >>

Microsoft is a software company. Despite its more recent push into building impressive hardware, it’s made its name with code and services — not phones and laptops. Build 2016, which kicks off today, is a three-day event in San Francisco put on by Microsoft to show what it does best, giving a glimpse of things coming for Windows users in 2016 and beyond. Read More >>

Microsoft has put its digital assistant front and a little left of centre, embedding it into every device running Windows 10 and available to anyone who feels like downloading the app. Now, Cortana’s getting some new tricks to go with her popularity, including a little extra nagging. Read More >>